Award Recipients Learn Servant Leadership Through Actions

Date:April 26, 2013

Zachary Schneider of Orlando and Chloe Westrich of St. Peters, Mo., have been named the 2013 recipients of the Servant Leadership Award from Palm Beach Atlantic University.

The Servant Leadership Award recognizes students who are leaders in the areas of ministry and community service. Awards are provided through a generous donation from Sam and Betsy Reeves of North Palm Beach.

Zachary Schneider

Chloe Westrich

The award totals $1,000 with $750 going toward a scholarship and $250 contributed to a charity of the recipient’s choice. A committee of University faculty and staff chose Schneider and Westrich for their acts of service on campus and beyond.

Schneider is a junior who is majoring in physical education. He serves as head coach for the sixth- and seventh-grade basketball team at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church and School in Palm Beach Gardens, and this semester he led a PBA mission trip to Honduras during spring break. His freshman year, he and other PBA students helped to rebuild homes in New Orleans for a week.

He also worked as a Bithlo Outreach volunteer to low-income families and their children in an after-school program, and he was a helper at the Connie Maxwell Children’s Home in South Carolina for three days. He was a Salvation Army Thanksgiving Dinner outreach volunteer in Orlando, and he was a child-care worker for the children’s program for missionary kids with Campus Crusade for Christ.

He also has served as a PBA coach assistant for the men’s basketball team at practice and organized recruiting data.

As a child, Schneider traveled to several countries with his parents, who are missionary teachers. “With various outreach opportunities, I continue to learn about Christian community which encourages me to live out my faith as a believer in service to others,” he wrote in his application for the award.

Schneider has chosen Children’s Impact Network and its Honduras Life Center as his charity.

Also in her junior year, Westrich is majoring in Christian social ministry and minoring in psychology. Her on-campus activities include serving on the Welcome Week Steering Committee and volunteering as a ’Fish Leader for incoming students. She has been a member of the Sailfish Spirit Squad dance team and a peer mentor, and she has worked in the Admissions Office giving tours and hosting prospective students.

Off campus, Westrich spent a semester studying in London, and she has been a Workship volunteer in the Rosemary Village neighborhood. During the spring and fall of 2011, she was a participant in a research project with Urban Youth Impact, a local nonprofit.

“Serving others stretched me in more ways than one, and really allowed both my heart and my eyes to receive a tiny glimpse into seeing others the way Christ sees them,” she wrote.